Liliaceae
by x.lithium
Summary: It gave her a choice.


_In the morning it'll find you, let the light shine away. Down a road that's leading me nowhere, and there's no way around it; _  
>(Twenty Years - Agustana)<p>

**Liliaceae**

_it gave her a choice_

**V.**

The man she marries is a Gryffindor.

James is brave as Gryffindors are; this never once meant that as a boy, he hadn't been cruel as little boys are. Severus had always been testament to _that_. But regardless, James is a Gryffindor and he is bright and brave and funny. He is irresistible in the way that charisma is, and perfect in the way that Gryffindors tend to be.

The man she marries is a Gryffindor, from long before his hair ever touched the Sorting Hat, until the very moment they leave that emerald soaked world minutes (_and heartbeats and lifetimes_) apart.

James shoves her into motion, and it isn't until her back is to Harry's crib and her consciousness is filled with cold and silence and the Dark Lord's presence that she truly realizes with dread that this is the moment she is about to _die_.

He gives her a choice. (This isn't the one she regrets.) She would never sacrifice _Harry_.

She hears the inhalation - feels the curse curling at the back of the Dark Lord's throat - before her world is plunged into green green green. She doesn't even have her wand, silly girl (_mudblood mudblood filthy mudblood; always a mudblood_). After all this time, and for all her brilliance and all her _pretending_, magic still never is her very first instinct.

(_it gave her a choice_)

All she can think is that she chose _wrong_.

**IV**.

He isn't at her wedding, or maybe he is. She doesn't know. She doesn't - _shouldn't_ - bring herself to look.

She is walking down the aisle to a perfect future with the nearly perfect man who loves her, not the perfectly imperfect one who has loved her for nearly all his life. And it is the happiest day of her life. (_half truths are not the same as lies_)

In front of hundreds of witnesses, she promises James that he is her future, vows that he is the only man she will ever love.

She isn't a _liar_.

But being a Gryffindor means giving up certain things.

Being a Gryffindor means being brave and true and loyal to a fault. She isn't sure that she is any of those things right now.

Severus has always hated weddings, she knows, and any friends of hers and James are certainly no friends of his.

She doesn't know if he is here now. (_lies aren't pretty, darling_) From the second-last row, he watches her shed the skin of Lily Evans and step into the body of Lily Potter. (_but the truth is pretty ugly, too_) She gave up certain things a long time ago.

She gave up a lot of things before she knew just how much she had to lose.

(_it gave her a choice_)

**III.**

She doesn't realize that she's never seen Severus' patronus before, until she does.

James gives her a choice, this is her response:

"Let me think about it, James." And a smile.

It is several hours later and many of her friends' giggles and _he's so cute and popular _and _you guys would win Prom King and Queen for sure!_s later that she finds Severus sitting alone in the moonlight facing a mirror. She sits facing him with her back to the mirror. (And a smile.) "So you've probably heard by now - I've made up my mind about what to say to James."

He smiles at her, gives her a look that she doesn't quite understand (_this is heartbreak and this is bravery and it is all for you, darling_).

"Look, I forgot to show you when I learned this. _Expecto patronum._"

Severus' magic has always been intrinsically delicate and exceptionally beautiful and this isn't any different. The doe glides from the tip of his wand and canters smoothly around the room and looks into their souls through lush lashes and woeful eyes. She watches as it floats through the window and out into the sky like burning hope, before eventually flickering and extinguishing.

"A doe patronus, just like mine! It's beautiful, Severus. But I've got to go to bed now, I'll see you tomorrow."

But the next morning she smiles at a Gryffindor and: "I've made my mind up, I'll be your girlfriend, James."

(_He would have been _brave _for her._)

And many years later after when she's made many more mistakes, Dumbledore requests her help in transporting a mirror to a mutual acquaintance. When she steps into that moonlight soaked room she sees that old mirror she once leaned back on. "This is the Mirror of Erised, it reveals one's greatest desire. Be warned, though, it shows neither knowledge nor truth, and many men and women have wasted away before it, entranced by what they see."

All she can do is nod.

"In fact, I remember one boy - the Slytherin with the black hair, brilliant mind too, may I say - in your year, who sought out this mirror no matter where I moved it to in the school. Better to have it moved away from the school, I've decided. I thank you graciously for your help in removing it, Lily. No doubt you see yourself and James with a baby boy or girl in the mirror."

(He had been brave for her.) She tears her eyes away from the man with the woeful eyes in the mirror, and for one second wishes that she could waste away before the mirror for the rest of her life. _(She wishes she could have been brave for him too._)

(_it gave her a choice_)

**II. **

Severus had a choice too.

But she has seen his reality and at home it isn`t anything except silver and green (_and purple and yellow on his skin_) - and this is what is real. She might be _different _in her family but his is broken and screaming and laying out all their flaws and mistakes for him to try and follow.

Hogwarts is his true home, and James takes that away from him. Children fight wars too, and he wears his scars close to his heart.

(_Levicorpus!_)

Hanging by his ankles and humiliation and failures - this is what is real to him and she has never been real because she is too good to be true.

She isn't new to insults and of everything there is to hate about her he says the one thing she knows he could never truly mean:

"Mudblood!"

His last name is Snape and it comes with expectations that sit on his shoulders and worries that tug down his eyelids and what he wouldn't give to have been born to a family with no magical expectations.

Severus had a choice too. (_But he never stood a chance, either._)

(_it gave her a choice._)

**I.**

It gives her a choice.

Professor McGonagall calls her name and puts the Sorting Hat onto her head. But she knows all of this, she's had Severus thoroughly run her through the process at Hogwarts multiple times. "_Mm. . . intelligent. Potential,_" it hisses in her ear.

There are no such things as second chances.

"_You could be great_. _Gryfffffindorrr or. . . Slytherrinnn? Brave. You would succeed in Gryffindor. There would come a time when the entire wizarding world would know your name. But. . . you could be happy in Slytherin._"

It gave her a choice.

And there are no such things as second chances.

* * *

><p>Thanks for reading! Feel free to leave a review with your thoughts.<br>_lithium_


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